Replies to post #132069 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[ibc]

Paul Thurrott on Microsoft Office for iPad

http://winsupersite.com/office/microsoft-office-ipad-review

Non-x86 office running on a platform with a gigantic user base...

[chipguy]

Thanks for the laugh of the day.

[Dmcq]

In 2014, we believe that the next A-series chip (probably named the A8) is likely to surpass the computing power of current i5 based MacBook Airs

I hadn't thought of it in those terms but yes a quick back of the envelope and reasonably conservative calculation indicates that should be about the right ballpark for sustained performance. Perhaps slightly less than that. Presumably they'll upgrade the Macbook Airs as well but it does seem a bit of overkill in something that has no keyboard.

[DavidA2]

Not sure what's funny about this.

Even if you assume 32-bit results for the A7 is the more representative of real world performance, you still end up with 1050 points in ST at 1.3GHz. The Core i5 4250U Turbo to 2.6GHz in ST, but let's assume 2.5 is realistic(because I've seen it reach 100MHz short of max except in few cases).

You end up with 2000-2100 for the A7, and 2500 for Haswell. Just a year ago, saying Apple catching up this much would have probably put you in a mental institution.

The fact that it does it in a Smartphone is absolutely amazing. If they get thermally opportunistic Turbo like Core i5, it can probably reach 2GHz - That's i5 territory like it or not. Worst case for Apple, its still kicking Bay Trail. Faster availability, and in S-m-a-r-t-p-h-o-n-e-s. No Intel process needed.

Unless Broadwell and Skylake is amazing, I'd expect Apple to catch up.

I'm talking about Pentium 4 vs Core 2 gains for Skylake amazing, not 15-20% faster amazing. I somehow doubt they will though.

Even if they can't reach Haswell level performance with A8, and all it does is quad core, multi-threading performance will be on par with Core i5 4250U.